The End of Charity
by Theodore Dalrymple (February 2012)
I have noticed this effect before. For example, I have been asked several times to a certain radio studio to give the public the inestimable benefit of my opinion, usually in a few seconds flat. (All opinions should be expressed as concisely as possible, but not more concisely than possible.) And at this certain studio is employed as a receptionist, who shows guests to the various rooms in which they will give vent, a young black woman who is both blind and somewhat physically handicapped, requiring sticks to walk.
From the point of view of Taylorian, time-and-motion efficiency, perhaps, this would seem a foolish arrangement. The person whom she is supposed to be assisting ends up assisting her in the performance of her duty. Is this political correctness gone mad?
On the way to the recording room, the receptionist asks the guest whether he would mind helping her with the various doors en route. By the time he sits down before the microphone, therefore, he is in a thoroughly good or mellow mood, aware of what a nice fellow he is for having helped a poor unfortunate with such good grace: though, of course, it is in fact she who has helped him.
He was sent to prison not because it was the right place for him, but because it was the only place that could be found for him at the time: a flurry of humanitarianism having previously closed down all the other institutions that might have cared for him.
On this occasion, however, the prisoners recognised that the young man was worthier of pity than indignation: they made an exception in his case. Indeed, they looked after him with solicitude because he was so obviously distressed by a situation that he could not understand. (I shall not easily forget his howls of distress.)
Many delightful, intractable and therefore profitable disputes loom. Is drug-addiction, for example, a medical condition, and therefore a handicap? Should enterprises therefore be obliged to take as employees the percentage of drug-addicts that exist in the wider world? And how wide should that wider world be? If an enterprise happens to be sited in a community in which there are no drug addicts to employ, should it go looking for them?
But the fundamental objection to institutionalising charitable acts by government fiat is that it hardens the heart and makes compassion almost impossible: there can be cruelty without discretion, but not compassion or real feeling (this is not quite true, but almost true).
It is, of course, true that judgments of desert vary, and even where it is agreed as to what constitutes desert error is possible and indeed inevitable: the deserving might be taken for the undeserving, and vice versa. But the consequences of making no judgments are worse than the consequences of sometimes making the wrong ones: indeed, refraining from making a judgment is itself to make a judgment of a sort.
Anything Goes.
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